Witness - by Josephine Waggoner (Hardcover)

About the Book

The "eng" in subtitle word Hunkpap'ha represented by "n."

Book Synopsis

Winner of the 2015 J. Franklin Jameson Award
Winner of the 2014 Dwight L. Smith (ABC-CLIO) Award
Winner of the 2014 Nebraska Book Award in Nonfiction/Reference

During the 1920s and 1930s, Josephine Waggoner (1871-1943), a Lakota woman who had been educated at Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute in Virginia, grew increasingly concerned that the history and culture of her people were being lost as elders died without passing along their knowledge. A skilled writer, Waggoner set out to record the lifeways of her people and correct much of the misinformation about them spread by white writers, journalists, and scholars of the day. To accomplish this task, she traveled to several Lakota and Dakota reservations to interview chiefs, elders, traditional tribal historians, and other tribal members, including women.

Published for the first time and augmented by extensive annotations, Witness offers a rare participant's perspective on nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Lakota and Dakota life. The first of Waggoner's two manuscripts presented here includes extraordinary firsthand and as-told-to historical stories by tribal members, such as accounts of life in the Powder River camps and at the agencies in the 1870s, the experiences of a mixed-blood Húŋkpapȟa girl at the first off-reservation boarding school, and descriptions of traditional beliefs. The second manuscript consists of Waggoner's sixty biographies of Lakota and Dakota chiefs and headmen based on eyewitness accounts and interviews with the men themselves. Together these singular manuscripts provide new and extensive information on the history, culture, and experiences of the Lakota and Dakota peoples.

Review Quotes

"Emily Levine has amassed an essential text for all students, professors, scholars, and general readers interested in the history, culture, and traditions of the Oceti Sakowin Oyate, the Seven Council Fires of the Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota Nations."--Brian J. Twenter, Studies in American Indian Literatures

"Josephine Waggoner's writings offer a unique perspective on the Lakota. Witness will become a widely referenced primary source. Emily Levine has meticulously examined all known collections of Waggoner's manuscripts, sometimes comparing handwritten drafts with multiple typed copies to preserve information in full. Levine's extensive notes are well chosen and informative. Witness will interest both specialist and popular audiences."--Raymond J. DeMallie, Chancellors' Professor of Anthropology and American Indian Studies at Indiana University-- (3/7/2013 12:00:00 AM)

"A book written from a Native person's point of view provides a rare--and therefore much needed--narrative about American society's impact on indigenous peoples."--Edward Valandra, Great Plains Quarterly

"In this sensitively edited and translated volume, Emily Levine performs a work of recovery mirroring that of Lakota amateur historian Josephine Waggoner (d. 1943) herself: distilling for scholars a disciplined but wide-ranging gathering of historical materials that might otherwise have been forever lost. The list of archives consulted is impressive, and the attention to Lakota expression and Waggoner's intention extremely conscientious. Well illustrated and annotated, it is a major editorial achievement."--American Historical Association

"This book is a pleasure to open and explore."--Bill Markley, Roundup Magazine

"This is an unprecedented addition to the field of Dakota/Lakota scholarship."--Shannon D. Smith, Nebraska History

About the Author

Emily Levine is an independent scholar and the editor of With My Own Eyes: A Lakota Woman Tells Her People's History, by Susan Bordeaux Bettelyoun and Josephine Waggoner, available in a Bison Books edition.